about

JSD012

Dead Ends, the album from New York/New Jersey musician & producer Kallie Lampel & the follow-up to last year’s self-released Revisiting, presents itself as a living maze, taking the listener through a series of alternately haunting and beautiful vignettes. With snap-to transitions and a drone-inspired sensibility, Dead Ends creates a cinematic experience that can be disorienting once you’ve surfaced - a swift kick back to reality from a trance-induced state.

The tracks comprising Dead Ends were recorded from 2013-2014 through a sample-heavy method, pairing the enduring cyclical form of cassette and vinyl-based loops with occasional synth decorations, to sometimes opposite effects: here, sonic signatures carrying a traditionally ”positive” connotation often mask an air of madness, while the album’s more brooding textures can create a sense of stillness & solitude. Pieces such as “Blind Cat” and ”The Horseman” seem to fill an almost schizophrenic space, while the healing strings of ”Palindrome” & angelic harp of ”I Remember” evoke a certain new-age bliss.

Lampel’s inspiration is drawn from physical process as much as mood and mental imagery, and Dead Ends is a tangible result. As with recent material from friends & collaborators such as Dali Vision beginning with their time at SUNY Purchase, Dead Ends represents another wave of the continuing & ever-impressive creativity coming from this region.